Analysis: In-person vote fraud near zero

A Wisconsin poll worker checks ID in February, the first election since that state's ID law passed. (JOHN EHLKE / West Bend Daily News)

A national public-records search raises questions about legislatures' push for stronger voter-ID laws.

By Natasha Kahn and Corbin Carson, For The Inquirer

Posted: August 13, 2012

A new nationwide analysis of more than 2,000 cases of alleged election fraud over the last dozen years shows that in-person voter impersonation on Election Day was virtually nonexistent.

The analysis of 2,068 reported fraud cases by News21, a Carnegie-Knight investigative-reporting project, found 10 cases of alleged in-person voter impersonation since 2000.

With 146 million registered voters in the United States, those represent about one for every 15 million prospective voters.

Concern over voter impersonation has prompted 37 state legislatures, including Pennsylvania's, to enact or consider tougher voter-ID laws. Pennsylvania's law has been challenged in court and a decision is expected this week.

The News21 report is based on a national public-records search in which reporters sent thousands of requests to elections officers in all 50 states, asking for every case of alleged fraudulent activity - including registration fraud; absentee-ballot fraud; vote-buying; false election counts; campaign fraud; the casting of ballots by ineligible voters, such as felons and noncitizens; double voting; and voter impersonation.

The analysis found that there was more alleged fraud in absentee ballots and voter registration than in any of the other categories. The analysis shows 491 cases of alleged absentee-ballot fraud and 400 cases involving registration fraud. Requiring voters to show identification at the polls - the crux of most of the new legislation - would not have prevented those cases.

The analysis also found that more than 46 percent of the reported election-fraud allegations resulted in acquittals, dropped charges, or decisions not to bring charges.

In many cases, people simply made mistakes. Felons or noncitizens sometimes registered to vote or cast votes because they were confused about their eligibility. Some voters accidentally cast their ballots twice or went to the wrong precinct. And election officials made mistakes, such as clerical errors - giving voters ballots when they had already voted - and errors due to confusion about eligibility.

One of the instances of voter-impersonation fraud occurred in Londonderry, N.H., in 2004, when Mark Lacasse, 17, used his father's name to vote for George W. Bush in the Republican presidential primary. Lacasse's record was cleared after he performed community service.

Claudel Gilbert, a Haitian immigrant in Ohio who had changed his address in 2006, received two registration cards in the mail and said he thought he had to vote in both places for his vote to count. In four other cases, people were accused of double voting for filling out their ballots and their spouses'.

Voter-impersonation fraud has attracted intense attention in recent years as Republicans and others have argued that strict voter-ID laws were needed to prevent widespread fraud.

The case has been made repeatedly by the Republican National Lawyers Association. Part of the group's mission is advancing "open, fair, and honest elections," and it has compiled a list of about 375 election-fraud cases, based mostly on news reports.

News21 examined those cases and found that 77 were alleged fraud by voters. Of those, News21 could verify that 33 resulted in convictions or guilty pleas. The analysis shows no cases of voter-impersonation fraud.

Many voter-ID supporters argue that the measures are needed to ensure the integrity of elections, no matter how many violations have occurred.

"Whether you have proof of it or not, what in the heavens is wrong with showing an ID at polls?" said Bill Denny, a Republican state representative in Mississippi, who sponsored his state's voter-ID bill.

That bill is awaiting preclearance by the Justice Department, a process some states with a history of discrimination must go through before making electoral changes.

Civil-rights and voting-rights activists condemn the ID laws as a way of disenfranchising minorities, students, senior citizens, and the disabled.

"It's simply a new big burden on the backs of people who just want to have their voices heard during elections," said Eddie Hailes, managing director and general counsel of the Advancement Project, a civil-rights group challenging voter-ID laws in Texas, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

The Justice Department objected to the Texas voter-ID law - a piece of which U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. likened to a poll tax - on the grounds that it would disproportionately affect minorities and the poor.

The state preemptively sued the Justice Department for the right to implement the law, and arguments were heard by a three-judge panel in Washington in July. A verdict is expected within the next month.

Indiana and Georgia were the first states to pass strict voter-ID laws, in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

Efforts accelerated markedly after the elections of 2010, when Republicans took over statehouses across the country. Since then, Republican-dominated legislatures - with the exception of Rhode Island, where Democrats passed a photo-ID law - have considered 62 ID bills.

Nine states - Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin - passed stricter voter-ID laws, though only the Kansas, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee measures are scheduled to be in effect by November.

The Pennsylvania law has drawn considerable attention, particularly after Republican Mike Turzai, Pennsylvania's House majority leader, said in a video that has since gone viral that the state's new law "is going to allow Gov. Mitt Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania - done."

Pennsylvania's Department of State released data last month suggesting that as many as 758,000 registered voters, about 9 percent of the state's 8.2 million registered electorate, currently don't have the Department of Transportation (PennDot) identification, which is the primary form of ID expected to be used at the polls.

Those numbers, however, may grossly overstate the problem, as the database contains thousands of names of voters who do possess IDs. A sampling of 101 voters on the list reached by The Inquirer found that 75 percent did have PennDot IDs.

That would still leave thousands of registered voters - let alone those who have not yet registered - without the ID they will need to vote.

A coalition of civil-rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union has sued Pennsylvania in state court, arguing the voter-ID law would deprive citizens of their right to vote. A seven-day hearing ended Aug. 3, and a decision by Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson is expected this week.

The Justice Department is investigating the ID law to determine whether it violates the 1965 federal Voting Rights Act by discriminating against minorities, according to a letter sent to Pennsylvania officials.

In a pretrial stipulation, Pennsylvania officials said they would offer no evidence that "in-person voter fraud has in fact occurred in Pennsylvania or elsewhere" or that "in-person voter fraud is likely to occur in November 2012 in the absence of a Photo ID law."

Pennsylvania officials, who responded to the News21 public-records requests, also reported no cases of Election Day voter-impersonation fraud since 2000.

In 2003, for instance, the Indiana Supreme Court invalidated East Chicago Mayor Rob Pastrick's Democratic primary victory because of widespread fraud. Pastrick, an eight-term incumbent, lost in a 2004 repeat election. Forty-six people, mainly city workers, were found guilty of committing absentee-ballot fraud by giving their ballots to someone else.

Some advocates of voter-ID laws say voter fraud is used to steal federal elections.

In one of the few cases in the News21 database explicitly involving federal candidates, four Indiana Democratic Party officials were accused in 2008 of forging signatures on petitions to get Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton on the state primary ballot. No one was convicted.

The News21 analysis shows that 34 states had at least one case of registration fraud - an irregularity that occurred during the registration process, not when someone voted - and that many such cases were associated with third-party voter-registration groups.

The solution, some say, is to enact new laws while also making it easier to vote.

Trey Grayson, a former Republican Kentucky secretary of state and now the director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, suggests that voter-identification laws could be paired with Election Day registration.

"People who don't get registered 30 days out could still come in and register on the day of the election," he said. "And a voter ID, that could give you the confidence that this person really is who she says she is and allow her to vote."

Grayson criticizes many opponents of voter-identification laws, suggesting that their focus on voter suppression may have an adverse effect on turnout.

"One of the criticisms I would have of the attorney general and others who have made this a big deal," he said, "is, by raising the issue and the way they are raising it, rather than trying to go around and get people IDs, sort of raising the specter of all this, they may also be suppressing the vote with their reaction to it."

Grayson said there was potential to have comprehensive election reform without partisan politics.

"You could take ideas from the left and the right," he said. "You could have a better system."

Who Can Vote?

This story was produced by reporters working for News21, a national investigative-reporting project involving college journalism students from across the country and based at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. News21 is funded by the Carnegie Corp. of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The story was edited and distributed by the Washington Post.

The Inquirer will publish other stories from this series along with other media partners.